Welcome to the Jungle

The first CD I bought was "Appetite for Destruction" when I was in junior high. My parents had given me my first CD player for my birthday that year and I ripped open the card with a homemade coupon for a CD of my choosing. I was bugging my dad to drive me to the music store a few minutes later.

I remember the old full cardboard packaging CDs used to come in. Smaller than vinyl's sleeve, but no less impressive to me, I would carefully loosen the adhesive to give me a nice, clean, flat mini-poster to be kept or placed up on my wall. Later, I'd discover the record shop a few miles away in our town's small downtown area. They had what amounted to vinyl dust covers, minus the pocket for the album you could buy on the cheap. Between the two, I'd rotate the bands I was listening to while filing the older ones away for safekeeping. I assume they are still in a box in an attic somewhere, waiting to be discovered again.

While it wasn't the first album I'd bought (a cassette of the Beach Boys Live holds that record) it was the first one that marked a sharp turn from my parents' tastes. It was certainly the first one that pissed off my dad. I'm not sure if it was the "Explicit Lyrics" sticker that turned him off or the band itself, but he was less than pleased when I returned to the car. He told me that had he known what I planned to buy, he'd have been more precise with the coupon.

What was done, was done. I now owned Appetite.

While the timeline doesn't matter, I'm sure I was introduced to the band by a much cooler friend, Jerry. Before that, I stayed close to the oldies my parents played in the car and house. Mainly Motown and old 50s and 60s rock, but never straying too far. Guns n' Roses was the first truly contemporary band I embraced.

Kids at school knew Guns. I didn't have to explain a band as "the same one that does..." to frame a lesser known song by an older artist. Guns were as dangerous as the suburbs got in the early 90s. Had our parents seen the CD's liner notes (and artwork) there's no way we'd have gotten to keep those albums.

Jerry was the one who wandered over to my stereo when "Welcome to the Jungle" started up with those iconic first notes. Just guitar and nothing else for the first few seconds. Reverb and Slash and space.

Then the basic percussion and the vocal police siren as the guitar riff sounds like it's in danger of spinning off away from the rest of the band, when it's really the force driving the beat. Everything regroups at the 28-second mark and the guitars and rhythm section both push in the same direction and then... then, it happens.

Thirty seven seconds in is a moment that forever changed my life as a music fan.

Because it's at the 0:37 mark that I saw for the first time that if you paid enough attention, if you cranked the volume loud enough and if you weren't shy about fiddling with your stereo's speaker settings, you'd find something not everyone saw.

That afternoon, Jerry didn't even ask. He walked up, turned down all the sound in one speaker on the stereo and pushed it all through the other and the descending line powered through. Independent of the main power riff, there's the secondary line and I'd never noticed it in the multiple plays I'd gone through for a few days before he called attention to it. I did not offer this information to Jerry when he asked if I knew it was there. I told him it was the first thing I'd noticed in a spectacular white lie.

It's there in the live version below as well and is perhaps one of my favorite few bar stretches in all of recorded music. That's the piece I think of when someone mentions the song (and not the "You know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby!") and is never far from my thoughts when I'm obsessively listening to something new now.

There are hundreds of little flourishes, bass parts, drum fills and hidden chips of music in the hours of materials burned into my brain. This is the one that is the common ancestor of them all.

I could go on for a very long time about what this album means to me in both very concrete and very wispy Wonder Years-y ways, but it's that tiny clip at 37 seconds that I protect at all costs. When someone talks about retaining childlike enthusiasm for something, that's the manifestation of it for me. The song (as a whole) remains an utter heavyweight culturally - it's the one I'd pick to piss off my neighbors in spectacular fashion by cranking it at full volume around 3 a.m. if I wanted to collect a warning from the homeowner's association - and is probably the reigning champ for "Song I've played full blast (by percentage of total play count) most in my lifetime."

While I can appreciate all the reasons people love this song and album, for me it's that little guitar part that stands above them all. A defending riff, tucked in behind its bigger, bombastic brother that was the first time I learned the lesson, "Listen harder. There's more there."

With God on Our Side

The first trip I made out of the house after my dad died was to buy a new bike rack for a car I'd purchased nearly a year before. After his three year fight with multiple forms of cancer, the morning after was a welcome, but guilty, relief that members of my family sheepishly admitted was finally a moment of quiet after years of obstacles, long nights and hospitals.

I flipped my music to shuffle and headed down the block in a light rain. It was that odd feeling of being in the town where you live on a weekday - simultaneously being amazed by both how many people exist on the streets when you're usually at work and at just how empty normally congested areas are.

I was thinking of my Dad, but not in any meaningful way - it was the hangover of months of checking in, running errands and never having him far from my thoughts. Does he need any groceries? What was the last inventory I did over there? Is he running low on anything? Is he strong enough this week for me to be "busy at work" so he can enjoy an afternoon out to run errands without having to worry about him taking a spill at the market? What am I forgetting? What is left on the rolling chore list?

Driving the road that splits the forest preserve near my house, "With God on Our Side" covered by K'Naan rolled over to the current track. Dylan songs will always remind me of my dad. It was one of the few artists he and I found common ground on before both of our musical spheres grew and overlapped considerably. I was doing the most exaggerated Dylan impression you had ever heard from a pre-teen in the back of a station wagon returning from the Wisconsin State Fair when my dad erupted with laughter. It's the first time I can remember him laughing like that because of some silly bit I was doing.

When I lived in Minnesota, not a trip passed without my dad mentioning it being the home state for Dylan. There were always loose ties to what Dylan meant to my dad as a teenager in the 60s without any really specific stories being told. For my dad music was a necessity of daily life and he passed that genetic marker on to me.

My dad also loved cover versions of songs he treasured. Without even looking, I will bet there are more cover CDs that he'd burned for me sitting in their cases right now than copies by the original artists. He had a particular fascination with reggae (no idea where that came from, either) and of course the reggae tribute to Dylan was a major coup when he found it.

When I was first loading Spotify with music a few years ago, the only Dylan music I could find came from compilations and covers. I dumped a few full albums of all types into my "Favorites" playlist and went to work weeding out the ones I didn't like. In the end, there were a few that still remain and "With God on Our Side" is one of those.

I ended up driving a lot as my dad was sick, quick errands to help out at first and more regularly scheduled visits as he got closer to the end. Eventually we gave up the polite lies and embraced the fact that he needed more help than company. My sister, mother and I worked out a schedule to have a family member at his apartment at least once a day.

Seeing the incremental decline from day to day was difficult, but the dips that I saw when I'd be gone a few days were the hardest. In a particularly bittersweet twist, the major gaps in my schedule were a result of my custody schedule with my sons. I'd switch gears between developmental hops forward shown by my 3 1/2 and 6 year olds and the quickly mounting setbacks experienced by my dad.

These two cornerstones of my life were intertwined. I'd feel sadness for my dad who wouldn't live to see any of his grandsons grow up, but mostly I'd be driven to tears by the knowledge that neither my two sons or my nephew would ever get a chance to know such a great man.

There would be stories, pictures, videos and hazy memories, but none would ever do nearly enough to offset the loss of my dad at the age of 64. Cancer took a man on Father's Day of 2015 that never smoked, rarely drank and was universally regarded as a kind, helpful and gentle man. Accepting that life isn't always fair doesn't dull the pain of losing one of your heroes.

I could write hundreds of thousands of words about my dad (and probably will) but the line "I had an undying wish to keep from dying / I had an untimely hitch keep me from climbing" sums up my dad's fight from the original diagnosis to the final days when he closed his eyes and never opened them again.

I remember a quiet evening when Dad was back in the hospital with complications from the cancer in his liver and kidneys that would eventually overtake him. He'd beaten back the first round, went into remission and was then diagnosed days before Christmas 2013. We'd gone through chemo once already and knew exactly what lay ahead as he was admitted to the hospital to address anemia and infection brought on by the treatment.

"I know you're going to keep fighting for the grandsons," I told him. "You just need to let us know what we need to do to keep you in this fight for as long as you want to keep going."

Dad just smiled and went back to napping.

Dad never made a big show of coming or going from the hospital. He never posted expressions of emotion on Facebook as he went through the process. To be honest, the comment I heard most after he died was, "I saw some pictures, but I never knew he was that sick."

What I can say is that he privately lowered his shoulder and pushed back against the disease. I like the feeling of the song's bassline - simple and understated, but driving and consistent- because it makes me think of that aspect of him. Every few bars, the bass drum slips in a few extra beats and that's him, too - when he had the energy, he'd shock the hell out of you by outlasting everyone on a weekend outing.

There are too many pieces in this song to adequately give a full dissection of how they fit and the connections they make for me. I think that's a big reason I love this song so much now - it can take a few minutes and walk me through a few hard years without causing any real damage. There are many reasons I treasure music - and many I can't even explain - but knowing that part of that love came from my dad is always a comforting thought when I have it. Of all the genetics my dad could have passed along, the music gene is my favorite.